Prince Philip Revealed by Ingrid Seward

Author:Ingrid Seward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2020-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

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In the autumn of 1968, the French magazine Paris Match published a series of family snaps of Edward as a newborn baby, propped up in bed with his mother, his brother Andrew on the old-fashioned counterpane beside her and Anne and Charles at the bedside. Philip took the photographs. They were delightful, informal—and stolen.

It was not until a year later that it was discovered that a free marketeer in the commercial processing laboratory where the film had been sent for developing had made an extra set of prints to sell to the Continental press. This loophole in royal security was immediately closed. By then, the photographs had been seen by millions. Life magazine in America had bought them. In Britain, the Daily Express had plastered them across its broadsheet front page.

The royal family were appalled, especially Prince Philip, who had taken most of the snaps with his Hasselblad camera. Princess Anne had taken some too, in which Philip and Charles are kneeling on the floor beside the Queen’s bed. It was a violation of their privacy, a gross intrusion into their family life, and it was believed by many inside the palace that photographs of the Queen in bed would detract from Her Majesty. Despite Philip’s protestations, it was decided not to sue. It was 1968, and the royal family was not prepared to exercise its legal muscle, preferring to hide behind the legal illusion that for some unspecified reason it could not “answer back.”

The bedrock of deference upon which the royal family had rested for most of the twentieth century was being replaced by the kind of fickle adulation more appropriate to the entertainment industry. The publication of the Edward photographs was symptomatic of that trend. The public were starting to claim the right to know anything and everything they wanted about the royal family. They were aware of this change in attitude and unsure about how best to react to it, but this was not an intrusion they cared for. When Philip talked about having his family “in the public eye,” he meant only at times and in circumstances of their own choosing. The firm was used to stage-managing public interest; it was understandably disconcerted when the audience started to direct the show.

It was partly in order to bring the situation under control that the Queen, encouraged by Prince Philip, agreed to allow television cameras to look into their lives with the sympathetic and carefully made documentary Royal Family, first screened in 1969.

Prince Edward as a five-year-old was acknowledged by some as stealing the show in the film. It was a poignant comment on his young life that this was the only show he was allowed to steal for some time to come.

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